


Bedside

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Punisher (Comics), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Developing Relationship, Injury Recovery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 09:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19788268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: David recognizes that he's gone a little stupid for Frank.





	Bedside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kokopellifacetattoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokopellifacetattoo/gifts).



One of the most important things a person can have, doing the work David does -- underground repairs, hacks into copy-written augments and run-away municipal bots, unlicensed build-types for customers who can't get their work done in a real hospital -- is perspective. You have to know how to keep your distance, and your cool, no matter what is thrown at you. For all intents and purposes, he is serving a good number of people as a sort of _doctor_ , and that means -- for everyone's best interest -- he has to maintain distance.

He realizes at some point during the rushed, but still incredibly thorough process of turning his apartment's second room into a sterile recovery room, that maybe that sense of perspective has been, just slightly, eroded where Frank Castle is concerned. 

It's not the sex. Or, not just the sex. He'd love to be able to pinpoint it that neatly, narrow it down to one easily fixed factor, but the fact is, he was fucked well and truly before he ever even let Frank kiss him.

David has fucked clients -- patients -- before. He doesn't think of it as a job perk, not any more than any line of work where one gets to meet a number of interesting and like-minded people in any given day. But it's happened plenty of times. He even dated a few of them, though never more than twice. He was too big of a flake to commit, he thought, and anyway, most of them were on the run or in some manner of hiding. They move away or find more above-board mechanical help or they get arrested or killed.

He's never invited any of them to his apartment.

And the thing is, he's not rightly invited _Frank_ to the apartment either, but he can't watch Frank burn through _another_ fucking infection from being stuck in the shop, which is filthy the way any workshop constantly used for bio-mechanical repairs is going to be filthy. No matter how many times he runs his tools through the autoclave and bleaches the ever-living fuck out of his work benches, it's still not really a _clean_ place to ask someone to recover.

Part of him tries to argue that he'd have done this for any customer in Frank's shoes, but he's adult enough to admit that's really not true. The truth is, he's gone a little stupid where Frank is concerned, and he started going stupid a long time ago.

It's work. It's hard fucking work, being Frank's friend, and he doesn't just mean the manual labor of carrying him into the apartment and getting him into the sterile room, hooked up to the monitoring equipment and the antibiotic drip. It's way more than the physical stuff, though David's back does hurt a hell of a lot more since he started working with Frank regularly. 

No, the work is paid in frustration and irritation and nights spent awake because he should have been back, should have at least called, hours ago, but he's still gone and he could be dead in any number of gutters, stripped for parts and left for the rats. It's paid in a horrible, brittle sort of hope that he'll recognize a place to stop, or at least rest. It's paid in knowing one day he really won't come back, and art of that will be David's fault, because he's the one who got Frank in shape to go out there in the first place.

David is a master of keeping himself distanced from things. It's a wonderful skill and honestly come very naturally to him.

With Frank, he doesn't stand a chance. He never did. 

He sinks into the chair beside the bed, meaning to rest just a moment, and wakes up five hours later, disoriented, surprised by the light coming through the blinds, to the sound of Frank coughing. David helps him get some water, tries not to think about the way Frank's hand on his wrist makes his face feel hot. Frank's eyes are intense on him, even through the haze of drugs and fever.

"Where am I?" Frank's voice is dry and exhausted, but more focused than it's been in the last few days. The relief hits David like a turbojet. "Micro, where...?"

"My place. Figured it was better for business to have the apartment haunted rather than the shop."

It's funny, really, watching the words sink through a few levels to really filter into Frank's total understanding. Marc has likened Frank's mentality to that of a dog several times, generally in an ambiguously favourable light, but this really is like watching some big dog work out a puzzle, and David laughs at the expression Frank settles on. Shock and confusion, layered neatly over a base coat of pissed-off, and trying desperately to mask something like betrayal.

"You have a place," Frank asks slowly, the gravel in his voice giving the words more depth than they really deserve. "You don't -- you do not, you _live_ in that basement."

And that's the thing of it. He pretty much _does_ live there these days. He even bought a very _nice_ pullout couch a few months back, because he was tired of trying to sleep sitting up or on the floor. 

Before Frank and all the wild shit he'd dragged into David's life, he'd had _hours_ . He'd run the shop like a _business_. He had posted hours that he could change, and people contacted him through appropriate business channels to schedule appointments. 

That was all still true, but it was all very different _with_ Frank. Frank might need at any hour, Frank might need serious repairs or a custom refab, Frank might need a different or new weapon, Frank might bring someone back with him on the edge of falling apart and needing David's help.

Since Frank walked into his life, he's barely had _time_ to come back here. This was always a place where work didn't follow. 

Now he has a whole room hastily remodeled into a sort of fly-by-night hospital room to bring "work" here so he can be sure Frank is comfortable and healing properly, infection free.

"You owe me big time for this," he says, rather than dignify Frank's denials. "I had to carry your ass up the service stairs because there's no way I could've made it to the elevator without someone asking a bunch of questions. 

Frank gives him a scathing look. "We've been doing this for three years 'n change, and you _just now_ bring me to your place."

"We've been sleeping together for two months, and you've never offered to go back to yours," David returns, and there's a sweet sort of satisfaction to the immediate way Frank goes contrite. "I'm gonna push a sedative through the IV, help you get back to sleep. You've got one hell of an infection still. I brought you here so you don't... so I don't have to watch you get worse again. I can take better care of you here, it's cleaner, there's less distraction."

Lips pressed together, Frank nods, and he says nothing while David gets one of the vials of pain-relieving sedative from the kit, pushes it through the IV, and then flushes the line with saline again. Frank makes a face at the bitterness -- Frank seems to be more sensitive to the tastes of intravenous medication than other clients David's worked with -- but he doesn't speak again until David sets to fussing about the blanket and making sure none of the cords and lines are tangled. 

His hand is warm when he rests it on David's. Warm and dry and holding him in place just lightly. He doesn't say thank you and he doesn't apologize, because neither of those are really things that Frank does easily. What he says is, "You figure out what you want as a favour. Anything but the bike. You're still not touching my fucking bike, David."

And David laughs as he pulls away, watching Frank try and blink back the onset of medicated exhaustion. He thinks maybe, if he's gotten a little stupid where Frank's concerned, maybe it's likewise true that Frank's a little stupid for him too. 

"I can think of a few things I might want that don't have to involve your precious bike," David muses, amused to watch a flicker of a smile cross Frank's face before he can smother it.

“Worst doctor I ever had,” Frank mumbles. “Always tryin’ to get me in bed.”

“Bed rest is important, and I’m _super_ not a real doctor.”

Frank just hums at that, eyes closed. There’s no reason for it, no reason to linger; David knows he’s safe here, knows he’s just going to sleep. It’s stupid, maybe, but there’s a sort of comfort to it, too, to being able to watch Frank drift off, safe and still and kept, just a little while, from his self-destructive war.


End file.
